Chapter 1
“Mom, remember how you once told me about an accident that we were involved in when I was a baby?
You never did finish that story.
How and where exactly did the accident take place, Mom?”
Stacy asked as she sipped hot chocolate at the dining table.
Her Mom was busy at the stove cooking up a sumptuous lunch.
Taken aback by the sudden question, she stopped what she was doing and turned around to look at Stacy.
Stacy on the other hand noticed how her Mom had turned a little pale by the question.
It was an accident that had happened nearly twenty-eight years ago.
Stacy had been a two-month-old baby when with her parents, they were traveling to Singapore from KL.
Her dad was driving the car.
Another couple, good friends with her parents, were also in the car with them.
Stacy’s Mom, still felt the rush of fear and anxiety overcome her every time she thought about the accident.
It was one of those horrific accidents where everyone in the car would have perished, but, by some strange turn of luck, they survived the near-fatal accident.
Turning back to her cooking, Stacy’s Mom began to relate what transpired that day.
“It is a miracle that we survived the accident. We were traveling back home to Singapore from your grandma’s house in KL. In those days, the roads were not so wide and accessible as it is now.”
It was nearly a whole day’s journey to Singapore, depending on the speed we traveled.
We left your grandma’s house in the wee hours of the morning hoping to arrive home by nightfall.”
Stacy listened with rapt attention.
She had been experiencing weird flashbacks and blackouts in recent months.
It was uncanny that the flashbacks were related to an accident as a baby, so Stacy wanted to know the exact circumstances that led to the accident.
Her Mom continued, “It was a winding road that we were traveling on, and we were about 2 hours away from Singapore.
It was late in the evening and pitch dark, especially dangerous when negotiating the corners. There weren’t streetlights, so you can imagine.”
Stacy suddenly felt a shiver run up her spine. She recalled the dark in the flashbacks.
She also saw dark images in the jungles that lined the roads they were traveling on.
An eeriness overcame her. What followed was a monstrous headache that would leave her numb, and due to the intensity of the pain, she experienced blackouts.
Stacy’s mom continued, “There was a civil war ongoing during that time. Traveling was restricted and a curfew was imposed on the citizens of Malaya and Singapore.”
“However, traveling during the curfew didn’t pose a problem to us since dad was an officer in the army.
However, people were wary and suspicious of each other. They were uncertain times.”
Stacy thought it odd that she could remember some images and events from the past, from an age of infancy.
When she got the flashbacks, it was like reliving those scary moments again.
The events would take her deep into the crevices of her mind. It was much like a time-warp that she transcended into as the flashbacks occurred regularly as the days passed.
Stacy reverted her attention to what her mother was saying.
